There Are Many Man Made Sites,

that can be seen from space,

but this is the first checkerboard forest I have seen, I am sure there are many more, but this one looks so distinctive due to snow fall, photograph © NASA, (Photo courtesy ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center), the forest goes back some time, the squares in this landscape are the result of a forest management technique dating back to the 1800s, where alternate one-square-mile parcels of land were granted to the US Government, to the US Railroad and various other companies, this method ensured the sustainability of forest areas while also enabling logging operations, in January of 2017, astronauts aboard the International Space Station shared a picture of what resembled a near-perfect chessboard pattern located in an area around Whitetail Butte in northern Idaho’s Bonner County, according to the NASA Earth Observatory, the white squares reflect areas with younger, smaller trees covered up by snow, while the brown squares are parcels of thick, intact forest, amazing!